Software Engineer, Molecular Biology

ROLE OVERVIEW

Benchling builds modern software for research and development across life sciences and biotechnology. Our tools help scientists work more efficiently as they explore the mechanisms of biology and chemistry, driving innovation across health, agriculture, drug discovery, and more. The Molecular Biology team focuses on building powerful, intuitive features that support a wide range of scientific workflows—from designing DNA constructs to analyzing protein sequences, performing gene editing experiments, and streamlining complex experimental data management.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Own end-to-end project development: Take ownership of projects from understanding product requirements and designs to planning, implementing, testing, and deploying solutions. You will handle the full lifecycle of features, from initial concept to final delivery.
• Collaborate with product managers and designers: Work closely with cross-functional teams to turn product requirements into actionable tech plans. Provide technical insights and feedback, balancing product goals with technical feasibility.
• Write clean, maintainable code: Contribute to both frontend (React) and backend (Python) development, ensuring high-quality, scalable code that adheres to best practices and solid engineering principles.
• Refactor and manage technical debt: Take responsibility for improving and cleaning up existing code while building new features. Identify areas for technical improvement, ensuring long-term code maintainability and product scalability.
• Design and implement robust testing and metrics: Write comprehensive tests for new and existing features, ensuring software reliability. Implement metrics to track and measure the performance and success of features post-launch.
• Collaboration with Other Engineers – It’s important to emphasize the ability to work effectively within a team of engineers, especially in cross-functional settings. This includes code reviews, collaboration on architecture decisions, and pairing with colleagues to solve problems.
• Ownership and Accountability – While you’ve mentioned taking ownership of the projects, there could be more about being able to self-manage, prioritize tasks, and drive projects forward without heavy supervision.
• Scalability and Performance Optimization – Although you mentioned technical debt, a more explicit mention of experience in building scalable systems and optimizing performance could be valuable.
• Adaptability and Openness to New Challenges – Especially in a fast-paced, evolving field like life sciences, the ability to pivot, handle ambiguity, and quickly learn new technologies or domains could be important.

Cross-functional Communication – While collaboration with product and design is covered, it could be good to add how important clear communication across teams is (for instance, working with data scientists, biologists, etc., depending on the team setup).

QUALIFICATIONS

• 3+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Proven ability to take product requirements and transform them into actionable technical plans and high-quality code.
• Solid understanding of software engineering best practices, including writing clean, maintainable code, testing, version control, and working within Agile workflows.
• Strong problem-solving skills, with the ability to iteratively improve solutions based on feedback and real-world performance.
• Experience collaborating with other engineers in a team setting. Ability to provide constructive feedback, perform code reviews, and work together on solving complex engineering problems.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams (Product, Design, Data Science, etc.).
• A passion for learning and growth, especially in the life sciences or biotechnology space (no prior knowledge required, just a willingness to learn and adapt).

HOW WE WORK

Flexible Hybrid Work: We offer a flexible hybrid work arrangement that prioritizes in-office collaboration. Employees are expected to be on-site 3 days per week.

SALARY RANGE

Benchling takes a market-based approach to pay.  The candidate's starting pay will be determined based on job-related skills, experience, qualifications, interview performance, and work location. For this role the base salary range is $165,113 to $223,388. 

To help you determine which zone applies to your location, please see this resource. If you have questions regarding a specific location's zone designation, please contact a recruiter for additional information.

Total Compensation includes the following:

• Competitive total rewards package
• Broad range of medical, dental, and vision plans for employees and their dependents
• Fertility healthcare and family-forming benefits
• Four months of fully paid parental leave
• 401(k) + Employer Match
• Commuter benefits for in-office employees and a generous home office set up stipend for remote employees
• Mental health benefits, including therapy and coaching, for employees and their dependents
• Monthly Wellness stipend
• Learning and development stipend
• Generous and flexible vacation
• Company-wide Winter holiday shutdown
• Sabbaticals for 5-year and 10-year anniversaries

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